


Shades of Grey

by MorganOfTheFey



Series: OTP: I Want You to Win [2]
Category: Luke Cage (TV)
Genre: Cunnilingus, Dom/sub, F/M, Femdom, Humiliation kink, Kink Negotiation, Orgasm Denial, Praise Kink, Slapping, Slow Burn, Voice Kink, light D/s in public, obviously, she's ~22 in this memory and not underage, sub!Shades, the rape tag is bc Mariah relives a flashback about Uncle Pete, they're supervillains but they have STANDARDS dammit, while they establish a healthy and consensual relationship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-24
Updated: 2016-12-06
Packaged: 2018-08-24 10:50:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8369473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MorganOfTheFey/pseuds/MorganOfTheFey
Summary: Mariah decides to take Shades in as her personal guard dog after she finds him lurking in her house yet again. Except now that she has her boy, she needs to figure out what to do with him ...





	1. Woof

**Author's Note:**

> all right so Shades looks like the evil anti-Deacon, so of course I had to jump on this ship. I tagged as slow burn because Shades and Mariah take a few chapters to negotiate their relationship and fill out a contract, plus Mariah ends up unexpectedly processing some stuff from her childhood. I'll add trigger warnings for that when we get to it, and I think you all know what I'm talking about so I guess it's a spoiler, but I just want everyone to know up front her childhood rape and trauma is going to be addressed and present in this fic.
> 
> anyway, I'll add hurt/comfort as a tag when that's applicable too, and as always, I only write happy endings. yes, there's going to be a lot of angst and bad moments, but then Mariah will get the love and worship she needs. and Shades will be honored to be the one to give it to her <3

Shades breaks into Mariah’s house at night, and yes, he justifies it by rationalizing it’s to keep her safe, but it’s not like he watches her sleep or anything. He’s not some sort of creepy white dude.

He also makes sure not to disturb anything. Leaving no trace is his specialty. He sleeps on the couch and puts the decorative pillows back in their exact same positions. Doesn’t touch the tv remote. Never uses the bathroom. Even keeps his phone data on when he checks his emails so he doesn’t use her wifi.

Mariah never notices, as it should be.

Until she comes into the kitchen one night a little past three in the morning. Shades hangs back in the shadows. She doesn’t notice him now either as she takes out a bottle of wine and pours herself a glass. He debates on leaving or at least retreating to a different room. He’s not here to spy on her.

It seems like she’s just having a drink though. One drink and then back to bed. Probably had a nightmare or something. Shades is impressed she hasn’t had more of them. Some people do after their first time, especially civilians.

Then he spots the glint in her eye and knows she’s going to throw the bottle before her arm even draws back.

He moves without conscious thought. That’s a very expensive bottle of wine. She might regret throwing it in the morning. And there’ll be broken shards of glass she shouldn’t be trying to clean up in her bare feet.

Shades grabs the bottle a second before she would have let go to fling it across the room. Mariah tenses and her grip shifts like she’s going to pull the bottle from him and use it as a weapon. He knows she’s good with a bottle and grins at that thought.

“Easy, Mariah,” he says, breathing her name softly against her ear.

Mariah abruptly lets go of the bottle and spins around. He carefully sets it back on the counter next to her glass while she crosses her arms and glares at him.

“What the hell are you doing here?” she demands.

Shades silently spreads his arms out. People always ask him that. Hell, she’s asked him that at least twice before. But she taps her nails against her arm like she expects an answer and he wonders how deep those nails would cut if she slapped him for his impudence.

Represses a shiver at the thought.

“Your security system is a joke.” He leans forward ever so slightly, aware of the way her fingers press together. “And not the funny kind."

“That still doesn’t explain what the _hell_ you’re doing in my house,” Mariah says coldly.

“You’ve dealt with people who covet your spot before,” Shades replies. “But that was political. In your … current line of business, people tend to be a lot more hands on with pushing others off the podium."

Mariah takes her glass back and sips from it as she sizes him up. He takes off his sunglasses, carefully clipping them to the inside pocket of his jacket.

“I don’t want that to happen,” he tells her.

She rolls her eyes. “Men only bother to look women in the eyes when they’re lying. How do I know I won’t turn my back and get a sharp shove from you?"

Shades frowns. “That’s not how we work, Mariah."

“Oh?” She raises an eyebrow at him. “And how do we work?"

He drops to his knees in front of her in answer. She scoffs, then laughs cruelly. The sound makes heat clench in his gut. But that’s irrelevant unless she decides they’ll work like that too.

“Convince me,” she says in that condescending purr of hers.

“I never tried to take the club,” Shades says first, because he thinks that will be most important to her. “That’s always been yours. But yes, I was going to take the business. Sit at the desk. Wear the crown."

Mariah takes another drink from her glass. “You’re not being very convincing, honey."

Shades shrugs. “You didn’t want it. Tried to step down, and someone had to take it. So yes, I thought it could be me, but that’s foolish. You’re the one with the contacts. The temperament. The vision."

She simply narrows her eyes at him. Still not entirely convinced, but she hasn’t kicked him out yet either.

“Besides,” he continues. “People don’t want some nobody ass Puerto Rican running Harlem. I would’ve been knocked off within the week. This city is _your_ birthright."

She hums in agreement at that and drains the rest of her glass. “So what do you want?"

“To see you win."

Mariah looks down at him, considering. He doesn’t lift his eyes. Just waits to be judged.

She slaps him so hard it hurts like an actual punch. Must have turned her torso with the blow. And her nails did hurt like a motherfucker. Shades takes a slow inhale, but he can’t stop the grin spreading across his face or the way his dick strains against the front of his pants. He turns his head back to face her without comment, even as blood drips down his chin. He makes sure to shift his thighs so that it’ll drop down on his leg and not her clean floor.

Mariah laughs at him again and pours herself another drink. Shades waits quietly for whatever else she wants to give him.

“You really like that?” she finally asks after a few more sips.

“I like power,” he answers softly. “And you are a goddess."

Mariah considers him again. “And what does that make you?"

“Whatever you want."

She leans down, scratching her nails harshly across his head, down to the back of his neck. He feels a slight chill in their wake. His own blood from when she slapped him, drying in streaks. He blinks slowly to keep her in focus past the desperate arousal burning through him.

“What if I want you to be my dog?"

Shades tips his head back, baring his throat to her and leaning into her hand gripping the back of his neck. He knows that same maniacal, shark-like grin is back, but she’s not flinching away.

“Woof,” he whispers.

Mariah shoves his head away and straightens back up. “Ugh. I should kick your pathetic ass back out now."

He waits for her to make the decision. If she tells him to go, he’ll leave. Still going to station competent security around her house that he’s vetted himself, but he won’t disobey an order from her or presume to ask for more when he’s unwanted.

After two very long minutes, Mariah sighs.

“Fine,” she says. “You can be my guard dog. But you start humping things without my permission, and I will personally neuter you."

“Yes, ma’am."


	2. A New Mistress

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mariah starts feeling out what she might want from Shades and what he might be willing to give her ...
> 
> (the answer is everything)

Mariah ignores Shades for a week after taking him in, which is pretty impressive considering he sleeps on the floor next to her bed and works as the main muscle for building her criminal empire. She doesn't even give him a mattress. Their conversations are strictly business related, with no indication of their earlier talk.

Shades doesn't complain. Various bosses and Doms have treated him worse. At least he doesn't have to worry about being assassinated in an elevator if Mariah feels he's been thinking too much. In fact, aside from the sleeping arrangement and denying the chemistry between them, Mariah treats him very well. She always listens when he has advice or a suggestion and never uses him as a physical or metaphorical punching bag, not even in front of other people to establish her dominance. She knows he's a valuable asset to her business, and they work well together, to the point that sometimes it seems like they can predict each other's thoughts.

The problem is that Mariah doesn't know what to do with him otherwise.

"Alex," she interrupts her assistant's report. "I have a problem."

He looks up from his tablet and glances around the room. Her office above the club is clear of everyone except the two of them, but he still checks first before he asks his delicately phrased question.

"Is this a problem I can assist you with, or should I call Shades?"

Shades would and has killed for her. It's a devotion she finds impressive and alluring, but even his loyalty may not last through what she really wants.

"What are my other options?" Mariah asks.

Alex pauses. "Is this um ... a girl problem?"

She starts to give him her typical scathing glare, but then reconsiders. His guess is maybe in the right general direction.

"It's a relationship problem," she clarifies.

"Well," Alex draws out the word and sucks his teeth. "I could order some self help books?"

Mariah scoffs.

"Google?"

She sighs. Already been there, done that, learned the word asexual. A small comfort that sometimes reassures her maybe she’s not just damaged or broken. But having a better word for what she is still doesn’t make it any easier when navigating relationships.

And on the flip side, the BDSM community was still just as white and filled with infuriating male Doms as ever. At least this time she found a few femdom sites that had been a bit more illuminating. She has a few variations of contracts saved on her computer, but that's all just wishful thinking if Shades is just going to balk at her initial requirements.

"How do you tell a man you'd like a relationship where you never have to see, touch, or fuck his dick?" Mariah asks.

Alex's eyebrows raise up for a moment but then he smooths out his face and shrugs. "I think if you told Shades that, he'd say yes ma'am and still beg to lick your shoes clean at the end of the day."

"I won't be sharing him with anyone else," she says, then elaborates at Alex's confused look. "I don't mean some sort of polyamorous relationship or—" Her lip curls up. "—giving him allowances. I mean he stays faithful to me, eats me out like a good boy whenever I want, rubs my feet at night—and I just literally never touch his dick."

Alex opens his mouth to reply, then pauses and thinks something over. "Have you ever seen him show any ah, _non-business related_ interest in anyone but you? Pinged my gaydar at first because it doesn't matter how in love a man is, he's still going to at least, you know, acknowledge half-naked women if you throw them in front of him. But I haven't ever seen him look at anyone but you. Even if you're not the in the room, he still doesn't look because he's probably thinking of you. So I still think all he's going to say to that is yes ma'am, maybe with a please thrown in."

Mariah snorts, then nods slowly.

"I mean, are you still going to let him ..." Alex trails off and starts to raise his hand to mime what he means.

"That will be all," Mariah tells him curtly. "Send Shades up."

She returns to her paperwork, a clear dismissal. Someone does have to balance the books after all to make sure everything looks on the up and up, and that's one part of her new business that her previous life as a politician can lend its skills to.

Mariah doesn't look up when Shades comes in, just waves her hand generally in the direction of the couch. He sits without question and stays quiet while she finishes up. Her time at Mama Mabel's isn't a period of her life she likes to think about, and it took her a while to connect him with the scrawny little Puerto Rican kid who used to hang around and stare at her all the time.

Especially while trying to process what she did to Cornell.

It was the sunglasses that finally reminded her. He'd shown up one day looking all beat to hell, both his eyes blacker than her. She'd tossed him Cornell's cheap pair of sunglasses. They'd argued about it, but the kid had a burst blood vessel in one eye and eventually she'd gotten Cornell to admit it looked gross enough to warrent the loss of the shades.

She'd told him to wear those until he could back up whatever shit he'd been talking, except then he'd never taken them off. Became sort of a joke that the kid had a crush on her, but then the summer had ended and she'd gone back to her senior year of college. She couldn't wait to get out of Harlem, make something of herself, marry some nice white man instead of getting her panties all twisted over some knee breaking thug like the other girls.

And now here she is.

Mariah has a quiet, self-deprecating laugh at herself in her head and makes Shades wait a little longer just because she can. She goes over the contract she likes best, splicing it together with the others until she has one main file that she prints out in two copies. Puts each one onto a clipboard.

Shades straightens a little from where he’s resting on the couch the moment Mariah looks at him, even though she’s sure his eyes had been closed behind his sunglasses, like he can feel her gaze as strong as she always feels his.

She clicks out the tip of her pen.

“Job interview. Go."

Shades sits up all the way and slowly removes his sunglasses. She knows it’s a move intended to buy him a few seconds of time to think, but he waited so patiently all this time that she allows it.

“I won’t mess with your shit,” he finally says, not questioning where this came from.

Mariah silently raises an eyebrow at that.

“Your club, your business, your legacy,” Shades elaborates. “I know better than to touch it. Loyalty is one thing, but you won’t have to run around cleaning my shit off the rug because I started feeling myself and tried to make decisions for you."

Not what she thought he’d lead with, but she does have to admit it’s been goddamn good to have a man around who solves problems instead of creating them. He hasn’t failed her yet, and beyond that, he hasn’t meddled with anything he shouldn’t or stepped out of line.

After a lifetime of men fucking up and fucking her over, it would be nice to have one who knows his damn place.

Mariah nods for him to continue.

“You know the work I do for your business. I’m good at it,” he says without bragging. Just a simple statement of fact. “Do you have complaints?"

“You would have been made aware of them,” Mariah replies coolly.

Shades grins that cocky shark grin of his and huffs out a chuckle. “All right then. But I feel like it isn’t a job in your business that I’m applying for here."

“Is Alex going to be a problem for you?” she asks, throwing the quick subject change at him.

“Why would he?"

Mariah says nothing and lets him figure it out.

“I’m almost certain he’s gay,” Shades says.

“Funny.” She lazily points her pen at him. “That’s what he said about you."

Shades’s sharp smile is more genuinely amused this time. “I told you, I like power. The gender isn’t a consideration."

Mariah rotates the tip of her pen in a circle through the air as a signal for him to go back to Alex. Shades drops the smile and turns serious again.

“I can’t be seen in your public life,” he says. “Can’t manage it as well as Alex does either. He’s an asset, and I would never damage your property. I’m not going to make problems for you, definitely not because of something as stupid as jealousy."

She nods, then quickly switches subjects again. “Sexual history?"

Shades cocks his head to the side. “You want a summary?"

“I want to know if you have or have had any sexually transmitted diseases,” she says matter-of-factly.

“Ah.” He nods to himself. “No. Most of my history has been in monogamous … arrangements … with people who liked to keep their toys clean."

Mariah mentally makes note of the way he refers to himself as a toy.

“Do you have a safe word?” She asks.

He blinks openly at the question. “No."

She flips up a few pages and circles the page number where safe words and other signals are discussed. Makes a physical note this time for him to choose between one safe word, the traffic light system, or simply saying stop. Adds a few more examples of silent actions that will also signal a halt.

Shades looks nervous for the first time when she finishes. She decides to give him an easier question next.

“Are you a part of or have you done research into the BDSM community?"

He relaxes a bit and shrugs. “I don’t … go to events. But yeah, those arrangements were like that."

“Have you done independent research?” she presses.

Shades pauses, then shakes his head. Mariah knows it will spook him again if she writes another note, but she still puts down the addresses of some sites for him to look over and a few book recommendations too. As many problems as she has with the community, there are good people out there, practicing safely and educating others to do the same. She wants him to have access to good, accurate information so he can make his own informed decisions outside of her influence.

Since his previous partners clearly didn’t give him that sort of opportunity—especially if he doesn’t even have a safe word and seems surprised he would need one—she suspects those “arrangements” weren’t following those guidelines.

“Were those arrangements similar to total power exchange?"

“Most of the time, they were my boss,” Shades answers. “You’ve seen how that works."

Yes, Mariah is aware of how that’s worked out for him. She’s heard that the reason Diamondback tried to have him killed is because he spoke up when they were boxed in at her club. He’s the one who tried to cobble together a plan, tried to play things smart. When Diamondback insisted on going off the rails, Shades still stuck around and followed orders.

And Diamondback rewarded that loyalty with a poorly executed assassination attempt.

If he was Shades’s last Dom too, she doesn’t want to press too hard against that, so she allows her next question to have a bit of wiggle room for him.

“How long ago was your last arrangement?” she asks him.

“About a year and a half." Shades clearly knows what her question is really about. “Sometimes the bible-thumpers like to go for that, but Diamondback’s hard on was exclusively for Carl."

Mariah nods and sets down the clipboard. Picks up the other one that has her copy of the contract, trusting that he’s smart enough to recognize that this signals that line of questioning is over.

“Chest hair?"

Shades smirks. “On me or Carl?"

Mariah shoots him an unimpressed look, and his smirk widens before he relents and answers the question seriously.

“Not much."

“Pubic hair?"

Shades leans back against the chest, his gaze more heated now and a little cocky. “Right now, trimmed. But your wish is my command."

“Keep it that way,” Mariah orders. “Short and neat."

“Yes, ma’am."

Alex brought over some men’s razors and an extra toothbrush when she first allowed Shades to stay in her house. Now she makes a note for him to purchase a nice trimmer as well. And a mattress. If she decides to advance their relationship at the end of this, she can’t have her man messing his back up sleeping on her carpet.

Not that she’ll let him into her bed though. Perhaps she should have a room remodeled for him, but she likes the thought of keeping him nearby. Sleeping next to her bed like a good dog, available whenever she wants him. The mattress can be pushed under her bed each morning so it doesn’t take up floor space.

“Size?” she asks without glancing up from her note-taking.

“… five."

Mariah looks up, but his arrogance from earlier has been replaced with sincerity. She doesn’t doubt that Shades knows better than to lie to her, and certainly not in this situation. She returns to her notes and marks that down. Six inches had been her upper limit, and she’s quietly relieved that he has an average-sized dick.

And now that she’s out of questions, it’s as good of a time as any to test the waters.

“I’m not interested in penetrative sex,” she states.

“I get that,” Shades says, faking nonchalance. “Most of my other partners preferred toys, anyway."

Mariah finally looks up, narrowing her eyes as she tries to figure out what was in his voice just then. She blinks at him when it hits her. He thinks she isn’t interested because of his size. She knows she can’t blame everything on porn, but she can damn well heap a lot of blame on it when she has a man with a dick that is literally the average size thinking he’s too small for anyone to want to fuck him.

“That has nothing to do with you,” she tells him. “I’m just not interested in seeing or touching dicks."

There. Shades was in the club early enough that she knows he heard her yelling at Cornell that she didn’t want it. He can make assumptions from that as he will.

He nods slowly, and Mariah taps her pen against the clipboard.

“This is a contract. It has a list of sexual activities, and I filled out my preferences. If you’re interested, you’ll fill out one of your own that I’ll review."

Shades leans forward and speaks softly. “You never have to worry about _if_ with me, Mariah."

She swallows, but otherwise makes sure her face stays impassive. “Leave it on my desk when you’re done, then.”

Mariah puts both contracts into a manilla folder and holds it out to him. He takes it, and she stands.

“Have Alex pull the car around."

“Yes, ma’am."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> all right, so welcome to this week's episode of "Project! That! Mental Illness!" where I shove all of my trauma onto fictional characters ✿◕ ‿ ◕✿
> 
> also, sorry if y'all were expecting Shades to be well endowed. first off, buff tough guys with small dicks desperate to serve their fem Dom is kind of my Thing just to start out with, and secondly, take out a ruler and look at what eight inches is. like maybe y'all have some stretchy Mr. Fantastic bodies that can take that nonsense, but I, a mere mortal, think the size kink needs to chill like bruh. I have enough trust issues as it is, I don't need something that could literally tear open my insides if your dumbass shoves it all in at once, and I think Mariah would agree with me on this one ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


	3. Lap Dog

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mariah reviews Shades's contract, and then they cuddle together on the couch for some cute domestic fluff!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you might want to read the one shot I just put up "Puppy Love" first before reading this chapter, because Mariah teases Shades about some backstory stuff that's in there

Mariah can't believe she actually requested--asked for, of her own free will--a dick pic.

Two of them.

If someone had told her at any point in her life that she would ever ask any man for a picture of his dick, she would have laughed and then ruined their life.

That being said, she looks at the two photographs stapled to Shades's contract while drinking coffee and has to admit they’re not immediately disgusting to look at. His dick is slim, only slightly curved, and his pubic hair is neatly trimmed the way she instructed. She appreciates that and takes another sip of her coffee while studying the pictures. It looks like he wasn’t lying about being the average of five inches, but she has to admit, the other men she's slept with have all been bigger.

It’s almost kind of cute, in a bizarre sort of way. Soft and vulnerable in one picture, and flushed a nearly-pink color on his lighter skin in the other.

Not that scary at all.

Mariah tries to picture actually touching it. Can’t really form the image in her head. Everything’s too abstract and grey-fuzzy. Which is ridiculous because god knows she’s touched dicks before.

She just prefers not to think of those disappointing experiences, and now she’s not thought about them so hard she really can't remember.

But it doesn’t matter. Shades filled out his contract with paragraphs of preferences almost as detailed as her own, and none of them give any indication he’s bothered by the restrictions she’s set in place. Of course, the best laid plans on paper and all that. She’ll see if he’s really so accepting after a few months of servicing her and then taking care of himself with his own hand.

And if he wants out, she’ll handle it, Mariah tells herself. She’s never met a man or a heartbreak she hasn’t been able to handle before, and her heart is too cold at this point to bother breaking anymore.

*******

Shades finds Mariah in the living room, with papers spread out over the coffee table. She's curled up on the couch with her legs tucked beneath her, sipping from a warm mug as she reviews her business.

Except then he catches a glimpse of the two pictures he'd taken for her and realizes it's not business matters she's looking over. That's his contract on her living room coffee table, pulled flush against the couch so she doesn't have to lean too far forward to read the print.

In his head, he'd pictured her looking over his contract in her office, still wearing her business clothes and wielding a red pen. He may or may not have even had one very weird dream that involved a bright red DENIED stamp.

Seeing her with it sitting in her living room wearing pajamas is ... a lot more intimate.

"You can watch something if you keep the volume low," she tells him absently.

Shades sits on the other end of the couch, and she doesn't tell him to move to a chair. He puts on a documentary he doesn't particularly care about, but the narrator has a steady, explanatory voice that allows him to drift between half-listening and watching Mariah.

It almost feels like when he was a kid. Him sitting and watching her while she studies.

"Did you remember or did you find out after I was brought down to the station?" Shades asks.

Mariah looks up and cocks her head to the side. He leans forward and lightly taps his full name printed at the top of the first page. Hernan Alvarez. She could have simply put his nickname to distinguish his copy from hers.

"I may not have remembered your scrawny little kid ass in the middle of dealing with my ... family drama, but I did after all that was through," she says, then chuckles at him. "I'm the one who gave you that damn pair of shades."

He doesn't have a reply as she goes back to making more notes on her clipboard. Mariah is the strongest woman he knows, but he's surprised even she would joke so casually about the aftermath of that night. Then again, one of the qualities he admires most is how well she keeps her cool.

"What were you always staring at me for?" Mariah asks him.

Shades stares at her now as he answers honestly. "You were always better than everyone else around you."

She studies him just as closely. "Better at what?"

"Everything," he replies. "You were special. Everyone knew it."

She considers that answer from the other end of the couch. It's strange talking about that one summer they--not really knew each other. Existed in the same space for a bit. She was a college student and he'd been just another punk ass little kid. She'd been smart and poised, even as a young adult, always so carefully put together with her curled hair and pretty dresses, like she'd just stepped out of a catalogue.

The girl who would never, ever notice him, and he'd been all right with that. Content just to be allowed to soak up her sunshine. And now she's grown into a woman even stronger and more powerful than he ever imagined, and he's sitting on her couch with her undivided attention.

He gets a sense of vertigo if he thinks about it too long.

"What books were you always reading?" Shades asks, because now he finally can.

Mariah blinks, then smiles slowly. "You wanted to know about the Agamemnon." Her gin widens. "But you couldn't pronounce it correctly!"

Shades ducks his head in an attempt to hide his sudden blush. "Never mind."

"No, no." She reaches out to tug on his arm, trying to make him look at her even as she laughs at him. "What--what was it you said?"

He presses his lips together and stares up at the ceiling. Priscilla couldn't crack him, and he won't buckle under this interrogation either.

Even though it's much, much worse.

"The ... th--" Mariah can barely speak, she's laughing so hard. "Agamemeenon. The Agameninim. Aga-em-en-ems! L-like, like, m&ms!"

Shades knows he's a bad person, but he doesn't deserve to suffer like this.

Mariah is still laughing. "Yo ass sounded like Finding Nemo!"

He finally gives in and looks back down at her. "What?"

"Like that little--" She breaks off for one last giggle. "When the little fish Nemo, he tried to say anemone, but he just--aneneminim!"

Shades reaches into his shirt pocket, takes out his sunglasses, and very deliberately puts them back on. Mariah lunges forward and grabs him, and he allows her to play-wrestle him down until he's laying on his back along the length of the couch with his head in her lap and his sunglasses held triumphantly in her grasp.

"Put your sunglasses back on at _me_ ," Mariah fake-grumbles with a smile she can't quite repress, then flicks his ear with her free hand to make up for it.

Shades takes her hand and kisses it, looking up at her through his lashes. He thinks he can spot her own blush spread across her dark skin.

"Well shit," she grumbles with more heat this time. "Maybe you should put them back on if you're just gonna give me puppy eyes. Save yourself some embarrassment."

She sets the sunglasses on the table though, and her hand returns to rub across the short bristles of his hair. Shades turns his face to press against her stomach, and she allows it, petting him gently as apology for laughing at him. She's soft and warm and smells like the kind of perfume that costs more than most people make in a month.

Shades has no idea how a sinner like him made it to heaven, but damn if he isn't there.

"Before I went to law school, I double-majored in Classical Humanities and Philosophy, with a minor in Latin," Mariah tells him, still absently petting from his head down across his back. "I still graduated in four years, of course."

Shades grins against her sweatshirt and echoes her in a mumble. "Of course."

She scrapes her nails across his head this time, but that only makes him shiver and hope she does it again.

"I suppose our conversation was a bit inappropriate," she says thoughtfully. "How old were you back then, anyway?'

Shades refuses to move from his comfy spot and just grunts in reply. Mariah does the math herself and gasps.

"You were nine!"

Shades finally raises his head to look up, chin jutted out defiantly. "Almost ten."

Mariah snorts. “Oh so you were grown, then."

He narrows his eyes at her and then very deliberately stretches out, lifting his arms above his head and faking a yawn as he flexes his muscles. Her eyebrow flicks up a tick, but her eyes still trace over his body, even though she knows what he’s doing.

“Grown now,” he murmurs back up at her.

Mariah sees his challenge and raises him. “Then get your grown ass up here."

Shades starts to sit up, but she puts a hand on his chest to stop him halfway, leaning down the rest of the way herself to kiss him. His hand fumbles behind him to find a spot on the couch to brace against, stomach muscles already straining to stay in this uncomfortable half-sit up position.

He groans into the kiss far sooner than he intended from how how petty it is for her to make him work for it like this. She smirks against his lips and bites him again, lingering this time to worry his bottom lip between her teeth. He growls at the sensation, but he doesn’t have any play to make. He needs his left hand to support himself, and his right arm is trapped uselessly between their bodies.

Mariah sits up straight and pushes him back down into her lap. He’s hard and his pupils are blown wide, while she simply smiles down at him, cool and unaffected.

That just makes even more heat rush through him.

Shades thinks she might decide to continue this when she trails a finger down his cheek, nail pressing against his skin, part promise and part threat. Her hand cups his jaw and she swipes her thumb over where she nearly split his lower lip biting it. He kisses her thumb gently. Her eyes are so dark, he can’t tell if her pupils are as wide as his, can’t even tell where pupil ends and iris begins. Just dark, warm velvet pulling him in deeper and deeper as her thumb presses down to force his mouth open. He’s practically panting like the dog he said he’d be for her, eager and desperate for her to push her thumb inside his mouth—for her to put anything in or on his mouth for him to lick and suckle.

Then Mariah’s eyes flick up, and she lets out a little “oh!” of happiness.

“The Price is Right is on,” she says, as if she has ever given two shits about that show in her whole goddamn life.

She grabs the remote and turns up the volume on the tv, then ignores Shades completely. He stares up at her in stunned silence for a moment, while she very studiously looks at the screen and not him, pretending to care about these white people who don’t know how much household objects cost.

“Vicious,” he murmurs, voice warm with approval.

Shades turns and wraps his arms around her waist the best he can in this position, pressing his face back into her stomach and a soft kiss against her sweatshirt. Mariah moves one hand back to his head to resume petting him, and he chuckles ruefully at himself that she actually had him going. Her nails scritch-scratch back behind his ear and he knows it’s a subtle taunt— _good dog_ —but he sighs happily anyway, resting in her lap until he drifts off to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to go ahead and warn you now that this fluff was just set up for the next chapter, which is 110% angst. but I only write happy endings, so I promise they'll work through it and get to the actual smut stuff in a couple more chapters ...


	4. Stay

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mariah has a flashback / panic attack to being raped by Uncle Pete, trigger warnings are in the beginning chapter notes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the flashback isn't in italics because I don't want it to read as a memory that Mariah has; it's more like she's directly living through the moment again and cannot separate the past-memory from the future-now, so likewise, the flashback part of the chapter isn't distinguishable from the rest of the text. if you need to skip past this scene however, the line beginning the flashback is "Except Uncle Pete is behind her and everything is wrong" and it ends with the shouted dialogue "Mariah!" I also recommend just skipping this chapter entirely. I'll provide a non-graphic summary in the end notes.
> 
> as for the rape scene itself, it's written from Mariah's POV and in her direct stream of consciousness. you get all of the thoughts she had as it was happening, but hardly any physical description. so it isn't very graphic at all in that sense, but it is very very emotionally intense, which may be worse for some people. I also added tags to the fic to reflect the events in this chapter.
> 
> the next chapter will be a lot better though! no part of the rape is glorified, Mariah isn't victim-shamed at all, and I'm not going to needlessly draw out the angst. she will get the love and support she deserves, promise

Mariah Dillard beat the man she practically raised as a child to death, before she even realized that's what she was going to do. The whole thing feels like it only took three seconds in her memory, over almost as soon as it started, with her standing shocked and bloody over his body, hardly an idea of how that just happened.

Candace's murder was much more organized, with Mariah fully aware of what would happen and what it meant. She knows that she had an innocent woman killed just to protect herself. She didn't want to go to prison, had absolutely no faith that the system would understand anything about PTSD or victim-blaming or give one single damn about a little raped black girl. So she chose to sacrifice another girl to save herself, and she knows it was wrong, maybe even an evil thing to do.

But all of that being said, horror movie commercials scare the shit out of her.

Mariah can't look away from the screen though, watching the child twist its head around and crawl on the ceiling. The horror movies with children are always the worst. She doesn't care to examine why that in particular terrifies her so much, but she finds herself gripping the arm of the couch.

The commercial ends, and she grabs the remote to snap off the TV. The room falls into darkness, but that's comforting. She can't see anything scary in the dark, feels more comforted by it than threatened.

She almost considers shaking Shades awake as her breathing slows. He's still asleep in her lap, and she knows he wouldn't mind being woken up.

But that thought makes her almost as sick as the commercial. Relying on a man to help her, to save her. She knows damn well the only person who will ever save you is your own self.

Then headlights flash through the window, lighting up the room so suddenly it makes her jump, and Shades wakes up anyway. He twists as he bolts upright, knees planted on the couch next to her leg, one hand braced on the back of the couch over her shoulder and the other on the couch's arm next to her own hand. The position drapes his body across hers, instinctively putting himself between her and the threat.

"Ma'am?"

His voice is rougher than usual with sleep, but his eyes are sharp as they scan the room. Mariah grits her teeth against a blush that burns her cheeks. She's not some scared little schoolgirl who needs his protection.

"I'm fine," Mariah says, voice sharper than she intended. She tries to soften it a bit. "There were headlights outside. The sudden light ... startled me."

Shades nods, but he still gets up and checks the window. "Nothing there."

"That's what I said.” She stands and gathers up the papers of their contracts, putting them back in their respective folders while he watches her carefully. “I’m taking a shower and going to bed. Do what you want."

Mariah sweeps out of the living room before he can reply. She knows it’s unfair of her to be so curt with him when he hasn’t done anything wrong—their evening together had been unexpectedly pleasant—but suddenly she needs her space. She’s scared and off balance without knowing why, but she does know she’ll be damned if she lets anyone, even him, see her vulnerable.

She tosses the folders onto the desk in her room, then turns right back around and heads into her master bathroom without a backwards glance at them. She doesn’t need them reminding her of how much he’s already opened himself up to her, through words and obedience and pictures of a body part he’s obviously insecure about.

The shower doesn’t help much. She still feels guilty and tense, like she’s forgetting something important.

Mariah touches her forehead to the tiled wall of the shower and reluctantly tries to work through what’s bothering her. She needs to get her damn shit together. Is she really so mad that he tried to protect her when she was scared?

The answer comes immediately. No. She’s mad that she was scared in the first place. Well, maybe a little mad at him too. Mad that she feels safer with him around when she should know better than to hand over her safety and sense of security to another person.

“Stop being ridiculous,” Mariah hisses aloud to herself. “Your safety is not contingent on him."

What the hell does her subconscious even think he’s protecting her from? Horror movie commercials? Headlights? Ridiculous.

She finishes showering and towel off, only then realizing she forgot to grab pajamas from her room. Apparently it’s one of those nights. With a sigh, she wraps the towel around her body for the short trip down the hallway to her bedroom, but she can’t open the door.

Her hand is shaking too hard to turn the knob.

Mariah snatches her hand back like she’s been burned and leans against the sink while she breathes in and out through gritted teeth. What the _hell_ is she so afraid of? She’ll walk around in just a towel through her own house if she goddamn pleases.

Is she scared of Shades seeing her half-naked?

No. He’s been watching her all evening and she hasn’t cared. In fact, thinking of his eyes on her is a comfort to her now. Nothing bad will happen while he’s watching her. It’s only if he leaves that--

Mariah blinks and the empty space in front of her snaps back into focus as her bathroom. That what? She feels like she has a word sitting on the tip of her tongue, except it’s all bigger than that.

And fading away.

Goddammit. She almost throws the glass on the sink’s ledge, but she stops herself. She isn’t going to lose her cool over whatever this is. Feeling scared and angry for no goddamn good reason, like she’s suffering from fucking hysteria.

Shades is standing in the hallway when she opens the bathroom door. He doesn’t say anything when she steps out, or when she walks right past him and closes her bedroom door behind her before he can follow her in.

But she felt his eyes on her the whole time. Even now, inside her room and separated by the door, she knows he’s waiting outside in the hallway like an actual guard dog. If she doesn’t let him in, he’ll probably sleep out there.

She changes into her pajamas instead. Obviously, she’s having some sort of mental … situation … at the moment. Straightening that shit out is priority number one. Shutting him out is unfair, but letting him in when she knows her temper, knows she might end up taking it out on him—that he might _let her_ do that—might be even more harmful.

He really is right outside her door when she opens it, waiting for her. It feels oddly familiar. Like him watching her, always watching her, a little kid who didn’t seem to do anything but watch her, like it was his goddamn job.

“I need you to sleep on the couch tonight,” Mariah tells him.

Shades nods. “Do you need anything else?"

He doesn’t push back against the order or ask questions, and she’s suddenly so grateful she feels a bit teary-eyed. God, she really does need to get her shit together. Her emotions are a hot goddamn mess tonight.

Mariah has to stand on her tiptoes to kiss him, and Shades doesn’t move a muscle as she presses her lips against his.

“Goodnight."

*******

Thinking about it doesn't help. That bullshit white people nonsense her therapist recommended--not meditating anymore, some new special word-- _mindfulness_. Yeah, fucking "mindfulness" doesn't do a damn thing. Eventually, Mariah falls asleep, still feeling like she needs to call Shades back, that there was something else he was always watching for, but she just can’t remember.

And she’s too proud to ask.

So it’s in her dreams that she finally remembers what his job was. How he always watched her until Uncle Pete came in, and then he’d slip from the room, and Mama Mabel would walk in too a minute later. Give Pete something to do off somewhere else or take Mariah with her somewhere.

She’s leaning over the bed and heaving before she even realizes it. Barely grabs the trashcan in time. There’s quick footsteps down the hall, then her door opens, and Shades is standing there in the doorway. It’s just like when they were kids, the same damn house, past and present blurring together until the man in the doorway is actually a little kid peeking inside and Mariah is still leaning over, trying to pretend nothing is wrong.

Except Uncle Pete is behind her and everything is wrong.

He knows Mama Mabel is out today, and he never had been a fool. There isn’t anyone for that little snitch Mabel hired to go fetch. But the kid came back anyway, peeking around the doorway to watch.

Mariah and the kid stare at each other, neither of them moving or making a sound, Pete the only one not frozen as he--

Eighteen credit hours. Mariah focuses on the kid, on going over her schedule for next semester. She knows how to keep her cool in front of other people, and she thinks his name is Hernan. Having him watching actually helps. She can't cry in front of someone else, and at least _someone_ in this goddamn household is finally paying attention, acknowledging what's happening.

None of it feels real, anyway. Thinking about it is all too grey-fuzzy. This was just something that happened to her sometimes, and then it was over. Nothing but another bad memory she wouldn't bother to remember. And the kid isn't freaking out or doing anything other than standing there, holding her eyes, breathing in and out, in and out, both of them breathing together, only a few more minutes now before this would be over.

Except then Pete pulls back and shifts, and pain explodes through her body. Mariah curls in on herself, gritting her teeth to keep from crying out. This is the worst part. He likes finishing this way. No need for a condom, no chance of a baby. No chance of her ever talking about it either. She'll have to slink off into the bathroom after this, try to clean herself up, and it will hurt--like being split open all over again--trying to clean the cum out of her ass with the blood and probably shit too, and how can she ever look anyone in the eye to tell them about that?

"Stop."

Mariah forces her eyes back open. The tears running down her cheeks aren't because she has the emotional capacity to be sad about this or even from the pain. They're just one more thing happening to her body right now. She swallows past a dry thoat, feels around in her mouth with her tongue, trying to figure out if she's the one who said the word. Uncle Pete hasn't noticed.

But the kid walks into the room. Mariah opens her mouth again, but no sound came out. This isn't part of his job. He's only supposed to watch. Why would he come in? He can't stop this.

"Stop," Hernan repeats.

Mariah feels Pete startle behind her--inside of her--when he finally notices the kid.

"Boy, what the hell are you doing here?" he growls.

"Miss Mariah ain't one of the girls," Hernan says. "You can't touch her like that."

"Can't?"

Uncle Pete shoves Mariah away and stalks across the room. The kid doesn't try to run or flinch away. He's not even looking at Pete. His eyes are on Mariah again, but she looks down at the floor right before the first punch hits, hard enough that she hears the thump when it knocks Hernan to the ground.

There are a lot more thumps after that. Mariah never moves or lifts her eyes from the wood grain of the floor. Mama Mabel is so proud of these wood floors. She likes the way her heels sound on them as she walks, so you can hear her coming and know you're in trouble.

She thinks the kid starts crying from the way his breathing gets raspy, but that could be from the blood. Mariah doesn't make any sound either despite her tears, and he might have learned--or been taught by some other man--how to cry silently too.

The thumps eventually stop.

"The only one who _can't_ around here is you, boy."

And now Uncle Pete is going to come back. Because Mariah didn't move. She didn't scream or tell him to stop or even run away while he was beating Hernan. She just sat there on the floor and waited for him to come back. Never fought with him or tried to get away or anything at all, not until the day Cornell killed him, and then she killed Cornell, even though she held him as a baby and loved him and raised him, she'd still beaten him to death just for speaking the goddamn _truth_ \--

"Mariah!"

Everything snaps back into focus, but she's not exactly sure what _everything_ is anymore, there's just the sound of her name and someone in front of her, and she can't just do nothing ever again.

"Madam?"

Mariah recognizes Alex's face before she feels the cold ivory handle of the gun in her hand. Only Alex still insists on calling her Madam Councilwoman. It probably just saved his life.

And then she's heaving into the trashcan again. There's a clatter, and she hopes to gun it's the gun falling on the floor, that she dropped it, it's out of her hands, because she can't kill Alex too, please Lord not Alex.

"Shades, can you ...?"

Alex's voice sounds distant, but she hears the scrape of the gun across the wood floor just fine as he pushes it away from them. Quiet, barely there footsteps. Mariah keeps her head down, blurry peripheral vision showing him scoop up the gun before retreating back into the hallway.

She'd laughed when she said she was the one who gave him those shades. Because he'd gotten his ass whupped, couldn't back up his shit talking, running around with Cornell and Pop. That's what she thought. How she had remembered it before. But obviously she isn't remembering everything, and what if the beating from that night was what messed up his eyes so badly?

And she hadn't even remembered in the morning, just tossed a pair of cheap sunglasses at him so she wouldn't have to look at his ugly face.

"Madam? Can you slow your breathing?"

Mariah nods and exhales as slowly as she can. Alex does the same with her, and just like that, everything is fine again. Her heart rate is still galloping through her chest, but that's her body's problem, not hers. She hasn't had a mental or emotional connection with her flesh suit body in decades anyway.

"I'll reschedule your appointments tomorrow," Alex beings, but she cuts him off.

"No," Mariah says. "I'm barely clinging to my spot on the council as it is, and my other business is in a transitional state. I can't afford to show weakness."

"Ma'am--"

"I'm fine."

And she is. Even with everything that's happened to her--that's still happening to her--Mariah has an inner self deep within her that remains unaffected. That part of her is buried deep, cut off from the inconvenience of emotions, and capable of handling anything.

Capable of doing anything too, as she's recently discovered.

Mariah brushes her hair back, looks Alex in the eye, and gives her next order. "Clean this up and get me a glass of water."

Alex nods. "Yes, madam."

She leans back in bed and closes her eyes, focusing on her breathing so she won't have to see Shades still waiting in the hallway. It's another minute before Alex comes back in, and she thanks him absently. But he hovers awkwardly at her bedside instead of leaving. Mariah cracks an eye open to shoot him an impatient look.

"He's worried," Alex whispers to her.

Mariah sighs. Of course he is. Her loyal guard dog, always trying to protect her.

"Tell him to stay," she says.

Alex blinks and slowly asks, "Where?"

"Where he's at." Mariah takes another breath and softens her voice. "And leave the door open a crack when you go."

Despite her attempt at softening it, the last part is clearly as dismissal. Mariah scoots down and lays back in bed as he leaves, pulling the covers up to her chin. It's quiet and dark again, and this house is hers now. The weight of the Cornell's gun she kept between the mattress and the headboard is gone, but tonight that's a comfort.

And when she opens her eyes to peek, she can see Shades standing in the hallway, barely any more than a shadow himself. It's hard to make out his face, but she feels his gaze on her and knows he's watching.

After that her sleep is heavy and dreamless.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **summary of what happened:** Mariah is triggered by a horror movie commercial, but it's just low key anxiety as repressed memories start to push back. she doesn't know how to work through them on her own and doesn't want to talk to Shades about it, so the memory ends up hitting her in a combination nightmare / panic attack.
> 
> She remembers that the reason Hernan was allowed to hang around inside the house and always followed her around is because Mama Mabel paid him to keep an eye on Mariah and let her know if Pete tried to get Mariah alone. The specific memory she relives is the one time Mama Mabel was gone and Pete deliberately cornered her during this time. Hernan has no one to go get to stop him, so he stays and ends up witnessing the rape. When he speaks up and tells Pete to stop, Pete beats him while Mariah watches. This is implied to be the beating that messed up his face enough that Mariah (having already repressed the memory by the next morning) gives him a pair of sunglasses to help cover it up.


	5. Sit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mariah takes her boy Shades out to a fancy restaurant to talk things over and feed him scraps from her plate like a good dog

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK so last chapter was really dark and heavy, but we're past that now, and this is your fluffy reward for sticking with me! I'm going to go ahead and put a trigger warning though because Mariah and Shades do discuss her rape, but it's not in graphic detail or anything. I just want to promote healthy communication and supportive relationships!
> 
> oh! also a warning because Shades heavily implies that the Warden was his last "Dom." he thinks of everything he did as consensual, but in reality, it was very heavily dub-con if not flat out rape. again, nothing detailed or graphic, and right now it's only vague references.

The next day, Mariah gets a text from Shades with a link to a little plushie with an electronic thing inside it that pulses in a low heartbeat. It's advertised as being good for stress and insomnia, the pulsing supposed to lull your heart rate into syncing with it at a slow, steady rate.

The text is also the only mention Shades makes of the night before.

Sleeping with a stuffed animal seems childish, but Mariah still remembers how it felt like her heart was going to pound through her skull. The text just has a link, not a question or a "helpful suggestion" or explaining to her _his_ idea of how to manage _her_ body. She knows she can ignore this completely, delete the text and carry on with her day, and he won't bring it up again.

Mariah sighs and turns her phone back on again. Why does he have to be so goddamn sweet?

_I want the brown puppy._

"Problem, madam councilwoman?" Alex asks.

"Who gave this boy permission to be nice to me?" Mariah grumbles without any heat.

She slides her phone around on the desk and pushes it across for Alex to pick up and see. He knows better than to look through anything that's not already on the screen, and none of her texts to Shades are either sexual or incriminating. They make sure of that.

"Goddammit," Alex mutters, only reluctantly explaining when Mariah raises an eyebrow at him. "There's a white noise machine I wanted to show you. But that's better."

He looks genuinely upset at Shades getting her a "better" gift, and Mariah's heart unexpectedly clenches. She pushes that feeling down--along with the memory of holding a gun to his head last night.

"You and Hernan are not in any sort of competition," she tells him slowly. "Is that clear?"

Alex nods, but his eyes flicker guiltily as he sets her phone back on the desk. Mariah stands and walks around it to grip her shoulder.

"I've already made it clear to him that you are not replaceable," she says, squeezing gently. "And you really aren't. You have never hesitated to be there for me or do what I've needed to be done."

Alex nods again, head ducked down slightly as he blushes. "Yes, ma'am."

"Would you like some time off?" Mariah asks gently.

His head snaps back up. "What? Why?"

"For working overtime last night."

It's a delicate phrasing for what actually happened, but Alex just shakes his head no.

"I--what would I even ..." He trails off and thinks it over. "I could be gay on grindr for a full hour instead of thirty-eight minutes every Tuesday and Thursday." Then he shakes his head again. "No. If I have to see a white masc for masc with 'racial preferences' every day of the week, I'll go Republican."

Mariah's eyebrows raise. "Well, I can't have that."

Alex smiles. "Of course not. I'm fine with my hours now, madam. Is there anything else you want to discuss?"

More delicate phrasing, her sweet boy asking if she wants to talk about what happened while still giving her a way out. As much as she appreciates the offer, she takes the out.

"No, that will be all," she says. "And I think we've made Mr. Goldman wait long enough, haven't we?"

Alex looks at his watch and smirks. "He has been waiting outside for forty-three minutes now."

"Excellent." Mariah's own smile is even more wicked. "Tell him I'm not in for the day."

"Yes, madam councilwoman."

She takes her seat at her desk again as Alex leaves, idly spinning her phone around. If Mr. Goldman leaves after being jerked around like that, she'll know he folds easily. And if he storms into her office to yell about his treatment, she'll play the grieving woman, hiding away in her office so the Big Men won't see her cry over the death of her cousin.

Whether they gloat or comfort, men reveal so much around crying women, confident in their upper hand and reassured in their own fragile masculinity.

Mariah checks her messages. Shades has texted her back. _Done._ No questions or unnecessary details. It's just ordering her a stuffed animal, but he handles her other business with the same cool efficiency. She smiles to herself. Now that's her kink--competence.

She sends him two things in response. A link to an informative and accurate article about asexuality, and the address of her favorite restaurant with a time. A moment later, she hears Mr. Goldman storming down the hallway while Alex loudly protests. Her phone dings.

_Yes, ma'am._

Mariah is good at fake crying, but it turns out to be harder to do when she's trying not to smile.

*******

Shades changes his outfit three times before he leaves to be at the restaurant twenty minutes early. He prefers all black, and he knows Mariah appreciates his aesthetic. She doesn't bother to be subtle when she looks him over. But she's also expressed that his all black outfits make him look like "a damn mortician" and that he needs something a little less menacing if she's ever going to take him out in public.

So he wears a dark grey suit with a navy dress shirt beneath, his tie a slightly darker grey but flecked with the same navy if you look hard enough.

Or if Mariah happens to yank him somewhere by the tie and appreciates that detail.

He waits outside of the restaurant at the entrance, breathing slow and deep in the cold air to keep from popping off a semi like a teenager on prom night. The knowledge that he's dressing for Mariah's preference, one of the many subtle nods he gives to her ownership of him, warms him while he waits, his jacket off and held in front of him, just in case.

Mariah arrives only ten minutes late, earlier than the standard twenty minutes she makes everyone else wait to be graced by her presence. Her eyes drag over him as bold as ever, and Shades feels the heat of her gaze burn through him. He steps forward to push open the door for her, and she stands just a little closer than appropriate for a boss and their subordinate.

There's a line to be seated of course, but he expects her to bypass it completely. Alex informed him she has a table on standing reservation for her in the back, and Shades in turn told the maitre d' to have it ready for them.

Instead, Mariah lingers in the doorway at the end of the line. For a moment, Shades isn't sure what he should be doing, the disconnect of actually not knowing her thoughts for once prickling uncomfortably across his skin, but then she slides her gaze over to him ... and up and down his body. She hums appreciatively as she checks out the muscles in his arm, straining against the fabric of his three hundred dollar dress shirt, the sound low enough that only he can hear.

Shades grins, relaxing into the position even as his arm starts to ache. He can hold a strenuous pose for hours to please his Domme, although he has to admit, it's a lot more fun to do this in public, just the two of them aware of the power dynamic crackling between them.

Holding the jacket in front of his waist turned out to be a damn good call, because the line isn't going anywhere. Mariah doesn't say a word to him the entire wait, but she does check him out from time to time. Shades feels her eyes drift across his body almost like she's physically petting him, and his breathing naturally slows and evens out as the buzz of her power settles across him like a warm blanket.

The only interruption occurs when a younger girl ahead of them looks back in irritation to see why the door is still open. Her dress is short enough for the incoming drafts to be a concern, and if Shades bothered to care about other people, he might feel bad for her.

Her eyes widen as she notices him, then flicker across his body as well, which earns her an irritated scowl. If his mistress had made it clear she was showing him off, he might be proud of the other woman's appreciative glances, but at the moment, he belongs to Mariah alone and her lack of respect for his Domme bothers him.

Mariah handles the situation by setting her hand at the top of his chest, nails lightly pressing at the base of his throat just before she drags them all the way down his chest. The girl flushes and quickly turns her eyes back toward her own date where they belong. Shades shivers beneath her touch, practically preening at her display of dominance, dick pressing insistently at the front of his grey slacks. She starts to say something, then stops.

"Ma'am?" he asks softly.

"I was going to warn you that a jacket doesn't cover much," Mariah murmurs back. "But with your size, I suppose that isn't a concern."

Shades feels his face burn as he blushes, completely unprepared for a literal below the belt verbal attack like that. Mariah's hand raises back up to brush gently against his cheek, her head cocked to the side in silent question if that had been too far. He turns his head and presses a light kiss to her hand. He’s sure as hell heard worse, and her comment is clearly part of the game they’re playing.

Someone’s name gets called and the line finally moves forward. Now Mariah sweeps past the line with Shades trailing just behind her as she greets the maitre d’. They hug and air kiss, and the two of them are escorted to a table immediately.

“Again, I am so very sorry I didn’t see you earlier,” the maitre d’ is still apologizing. “We already have your usual table prepared, with your favorite wine as you ah …"

He trails off and looks Shades over, hesitating over assigning him a title Mariah may not approve of.

“My head of security,” Mariah says graciously.

“Ah, yes. As he requested,” the maitre d’ finishes.

Shades pulls out her chair for Mariah to sit down, and she gives the other man a polite smile.

“I’ll need a few minutes before I’m ready to order,” she tells him.

The maitre d’ takes that as the dismissal it is and wishes them well before leaving. Shades stays standing, aware that Mariah had said she’d need a bit before she ordered, not “we.” She glances over the menu for a moment before she looks up and notices him still standing there.

“Sit,” she orders, waving him down to his seat. “I’ll have you at my feet begging for scraps some other time. I prefer to maintain decorum in public."

Shades sits slowly in the chair opposite of her, tucking away the mental picture of her hand feeding him for later. He doesn’t bother to touch his menu. He can buy the suits and the fancy watches, look the part of first class, but gangsters don't have standing reservations at restaurants with three month waiting lists and unpronounceable french names. This isn’t his world, and he doesn’t want to embarrass either of them by mispronouncing one of the dishes.

“We’re going to have dinner together,” Mariah says as she looks over the menu. “You won’t be eating much. So long as you’re good tonight, I have plans for your dessert."

Shades takes off his sunglasses and clips them to his dress shirt pocket. “Yes ma’am."

Mariah glances up at him, making naked eye contact for the first time tonight. “There are things we need to discuss."

He nods. “I’ve done my assigned reading."

Both the “independent research” on the BDSM community and etiquette that Mariah stressed, and the article on asexuality she’d sent him. He wasn’t particularly surprised to learn that was her orientation. It fit with how calm she always remained throughout their games, and his only opinion on that matter is that she’s probably a better Domme because of it.

That, and it’s also nice to think maybe this means their arrangement isn’t just about sex for her, like Shades had assumed.

“Good.” Mariah flicks past a page. “I had a roommate in college who never did the reading for any of her classes, and then she’d come home and cry about failing.” She pauses and looks up to shoot him a wicked grin. “In law school, we’d hide the books from each other, steal them from the library, rip out the chapters for the next test."

Shades imagines the “Miss Mariah” he’d seen as a kid going off to that sort of law school. He has no doubt she adapted quickly and crushed her competition, but it’s a clear insight into how she grew into the woman she is today.

An insight into her youth and psyche that Mariah freely hands over to him.

“I had a lawyer who cried once,” he shares in return. “Right there in the courtroom."

Mariah’s eyebrows raise in interest. “Really?"

Shades chuckles. “I wasn’t the easiest client, and he was some public defender straight out of a community college. I can’t even remember what the prosecutor said ‘cause I was an angry little shit, but he just choked up and had to rest his case."

Mariah nods slowly, but she doesn’t offer her pity or condolences. He’d been in and out of juvie for a while by then, only a matter of time before he got tried as an adult. There were a thousand lost little brown boys being fed into the system even as they sat in this fancy restaurant and spoke. It is what it is.

“Learning to present your case without crying was tough,” she says.

“For you?” Shades asks in disbelief.

Mariah leans forward a bit like she’s imparting a secret. “You can’t hit them,” she says. “No matter how smug and corrupt and stupid they are, you cannot haul off across that courtroom and beat their dumb ass."

Shades nods. He remembers that feeling, seriously debating with himself if a few more years in prison would actually be worth getting in a couple of punches.

“You have to take every asinine fucking sentence that comes outta their damn mouths like it’s just as intelligent as your actual facts,” she continues. “All the fear mongering and stereotypes and dog whistles so loud they might as well be hailing a cab. And you can’t just—your honor, this walking home depot eggshell white paint sample don’t know what the fuck he’s on about. You can’t say that!"

Shades grins, watching Mariah get into the swing of her rant with delight.

“And men ain’t got a single goddamn survival instinct among them. I wasn’t about to cry because I was—“ Mariah stops and scoffs. “Sad. I was just trying so … so hard not to strangle them with their five dollar K-Mart ties."

“If you get that urge tonight,” Shades says playfully, trailing off with a smirk.

Her eyes flick down to his tie, and she hums softly like she’s really considering it. Shades tilts his chin up, just a bit, to give her a better view of his throat.

“How is everything tonight?"

The maitre d’s voice slices through the moment, and Shades exhales slowly to keep from glaring at the man. This is Mariah’s favorite restaurant and he’s going to be on his best behavior. He resists the petty urge to put his sunglasses back on.

“Fine, thank you,” Mariah replies coolly.

“Do you need another moment or are you ready to order?"

Shades leans back in his chair and surveys the restaurant while Mariah places her order. Their table is pulled up in one corner, with a small half wall sporting some sort of overflowing potted plant on top giving them some semblance of privacy. A few other tables are still visible, but the atmosphere is of polite indifference, everyone else studiously avoiding eye contact with the other clientele in that way residents of big cities do to pretend they have personal space.

“And …” the maitre d’ pauses, his eyes flicking from Mariah to him. “Will you be needing anything, sir?"

Shades very obviously hasn’t touched his menu, and he hands it back without hesitation. “I’m fine."

“Right.” The maitre d’ turns back to Mariah. “Your food will be out shortly, ma’am."

Shades waits for the other man to leave before speaking. “Should we be seen in public together?"

“Our friends in blue already know we’re … associates,” Mariah replies. “Keeping you entirely separate from my public life would be difficult and immediately suspicious when we eventually would have been spotted together. Might as well hide you in plain sight."

Shades smiles, tipping his head to her. Neither Detective Knight nor Claire Temple have pressed charges against him yet. When Priscella tried to call him back down to the station for a “follow up statement,” Mariah was quick to set her straight that she’d hired Shades as her bodyguard and he’d only gone down in the basement to look for her. After all, she was the owner of the club and would have known about the holdover rooms from the prohibition, which made that the most likely place for her to hide. Too bad he missed that she’d slipped out already in all the confusion.

Just as a special favor to her old sorority sister, Mariah had even convinced him not to press charges against Detective Knight for assaulting him with a wrench to the point of head trauma—even though it does seem like she has some sort of vendetta against Mariah and anyone who works for her at this point. There’s also no need to mention how Ms. Temple was fired after some sort of altercation at her last job that resulted in a man’s death, or how both of the women are close, personal friends of Luke Cage. Very personal indeed, as Mariah herself had seen Detective Knight leaving Harlem’s Paradise with Cage in an apparent booty ca--

And that’s when that particular phone call ended. It still makes heat pulse through him to think about.

"You made the right call last night, bringing in Alex," Mariah tells him. "But if it happens again, don't let him get so close."

"Yes, ma'am." Shades pauses, then asks his next question slowly. "Is there anything else you want me to do for you?"

"My childhood--" Mariah stops and gives a tight, bitter smile. "Youth, I suppose. Those aren't memories I dwell on."

She trails off and takes a drink of her wine. Shades waits silently, even though he thinks he knows where this is going. He'd wondered before when she joked about the morning after he saw why her uncle needed to be kept away from her, how she'd given him an old pair of Cornell's sunglasses to help cover up the beating he'd gotten for trying to stop it. Not that he had really expected the older man to stop.

But he'd always fantasized about someone telling his father to stop, or even ask about the bruises on his face. As much as the world seems to be goddamn crawling with them today, no superhero ever showed up for him though, but he'd thought--

Well. He knew he wasn't some kind of hero and that he'd definitely get his ass beat, but that already happened all the time anyway. Somehow he'd just thought getting hurt with Mariah--for her--might actually make it mean something that time.

"Did you only see that one night?" she finally asks.

Shades reads in between the lines, to what she's really admitting. She can't remember. He remembers every second of the abuse his father doled out, and god knows he remembers prison. Dear old Carl might have been the prized fighter, but there were other ways to get on the Warden's good side.

He's heard some people experience the opposite though, losing memories and entire chunks of time. Maybe all of that nasty shit is what's to blame for how he is now. Maybe he could have been a better person if it never happened or he just blocked it all out. But he can't imagine living his life and then suddenly just remembering something like that.

"Yes," Shades answers. "It happened in August. Mama Mabel kept closer to you after and then you left a couple weeks later."

Mariah nods, her gaze unfocused. "I was so worried about my schedule. My advisor was a goddamn moron who kept telling me eighteen hour semesters was too much stress for the _fe-male body_."

Shit, it's a wonder she's only killed one man so far.

Her gaze clears and snaps back onto him. "We do have actual business to discuss though."

Shades nods to show he's listening. He isn't sure what part of their "business" together she could want to discuss in public with him, but he recognizes the abrupt transition as a clear signal their trip down memory lane is over.

"I want to hold a community gathering," Mariah continues. "I'd like to put more outreach programs in place, but the last thing I want to do is come sweeping in like some kind of white savior, offering people shit they don't need. And I need to get back in touch with the actual people of Harlem not just," She waves her hand in the air, giving a wry smile. "Tax paying constituents."

Shades nods again. "Diversifying. Smart move."

Mariah agrees with a small hum. "I've been jerking myself off playing politics for too long. I shouldn't lose sight of the people I'm representing."

It's a good PR statement, and she'll probably say a similar line in an interview soon. Plus, she'll need Harlem's support to keep her seat on the council, but she's still feeling out her other options in the community in case that falls through. Not putting all of her eggs in one political basket. Shades respects that it's a sound strategy, but he also thinks there might be a needle of truth in that haystack.

"Who do you think should be invited?" she asks him suddenly.

Shades blinks. He's still not used to how she'll ask him for advice. Cornell hadn't wanted to hear it, and giving advice to Diamondback always walked a dangerously thin line to speaking out of turn.

"Bobby Fischer," he answers slowly. "And Turk, asshole that he is. That kid's mother. Probably Sister Janelle and her brood. Claire Temple and Detective Knight will show up no matter what we do."

Mariah nods and listens attentively while he names off a few other people important enough to warrant an invitation. Harlem's changed a lot and not at all since he left. He's gotten a better feel for it after being back for a few weeks, but he's sure he isn't listing anyone she hasn't thought of herself.

“I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know,” he says when he finishes naming people.

“You might have,” Mariah says. “You often do. And if confirming my thoughts is the worst that happens when I ask you opinion …"

She shrugs and takes another sip from her wineglass. Shades tries not to let it show on his face how warm he feels from her admitting he has good advice. Luckily for his pride, the maitre d’ arrives with Mariah’s food in the next moment, but he still suspects she knows damn well he was gazing at her like an adoring puppy.

Mariah has some sort of pasta dish with white sauce instead of marinara, and more sides than she can eat on her own. She still takes the first bite from each plate though. The salad she keeps as her own. The baked potato is good enough to warrant several bites before she pushes it over and lets Shades have the rest. She finds such petty little ways to remind him that she owns him, and he loves it. She’s also surprisingly generous, nudging the bread basket his way and giving him almost the entire shrimp platter.

They don’t speak while they eat, but the silence is easy and comfortable. Shades prefers keeping quiet anyway to listen for the soft hums of approval Mariah makes when she tries a dish she particularly likes.

There’s hardly a fourth of her pasta left when she pushes that plate over to him, but Shades is surprised she’s letting him have part of her main dish at all. She doesn’t bother to make any attempt at subtlety as she watches him eat now that she’s finished herself, and having her undivided attention is enough to rekindle the sparks of arousal from earlier.

“Put your hand on your inseam."

Her order is soft and the most delicate way she possibly could have told him to touch himself through his slacks. Shades looks up to make eye contact with her, then obeys.

“Just keep it there,” Mariah tells him. “Nothing else. I want you to feel what _I’m_ doing to you."

Shades feels himself twitch beneath his palm just from the authority in her voice and swallows roughly. “Yes ma’am."

Mariah waits for a beat, then nods to his plate for him to resume eating. Even though it’s his left hand under the table, it’s difficult for him to twirl the pasta neatly onto his fork without his other hand to hold a spoon to the end of it. He’s had Doms take away his control before. Take away the silverware and the plate, make him eat off the floor. The Warden liked that especially.

But now going to that great of a length to humiliate him seems clumsy and ridiculous, a bullying overcompensation for not having any real power over him at all. Mariah only had to tell him to put one hand beneath the table and now he looks like an idiot who doesn’t know how to eat pasta. Everything that happened in prison could be rationalized away as what he did to survive, but he willingly subjects himself to Mariah’s thousand little humiliations, and that makes arousal stab through him hot and sharp.

“I picked out a chair for you so you have a place to sit in my room,” she continues. “It’s sturdy."

Shades concentrates on successfully bringing fork to mouth. The fact that it’s an actual possibility he might fuck up something so simple because of how fast she’s dropping him down into subspace just makes him fall even harder. He can’t help imagining someone looking over and witnessing that, laughing to their own date about the grown man who doesn’t even know how to put food in his mouth, and he has to bite down on the tines of his fork when he does eat the pasta to keep from groaning.

Mariah smirks like she knows exactly how messed up she’s got him.

“I won’t bother to tie your arms to the chair.” She pauses for a moment. “This time."

Shades swallows hard, and the pasta seems to stick to his throat all the way down. He’s already starting to feel the outline of his dick beneath his left arm, and he fights to keep his grip loose and easy like she ordered.

“You’ve done very well at being patient so far,” Mariah tells him gently. “But I want proof you can control yourself like a good boy."

Shades nods and has to clear his throat before he can speak. “And what will you be doing, while I wait in the chair?"

He knows he’s just fucking himself over even further. From the smile on Mariah’s face, she knows it too. But she takes a long drink from her wineglass instead of answering, drawing out the moment and giving him time to imagine all the possibilities.

He considers that despite her strange abundance of generosity, she might actually be the most ruthless Domme he’s ever had. Maybe that’s why she can afford to be so kind to him. Her power over him is so absolute, and they both know it, so she truly can do whatever she wants to him without fear of that control slipping.

“I’m going to pleasure myself,” Mariah finally answers. “And I want you to watch."

Shades gives up on eating and focuses his full concentration on just keeping his breathing steady. Sitting in a chair, not allowed to move or touch, watching as the woman he’s adored for the majority of his life gets herself off in front of him sounds like the best kind of torture.

Mariah glances down at his plate, then back up at him where’s he’s not moving, and lifts one eyebrow. “Clean your plate, baby."

He has to close his eyes and grit his teeth to keep from whimpering. Speaking to him like he’s a child cuts close to the age difference that always kept him apart from her. He takes a deep breath and exhales slowly, his breathing almost under control when the tip of her shoe gently nudges his.

Shades opens his eyes to see Mariah looking as cool and calm as ever, nothing of her concern for him showing on her except for the point of contact she’d established between them beneath the table and maybe something else flickering in her eyes. He gives her a nod, and starts on completing her command. She keeps her foot lightly resting against his, an anchor he uses to ground himself as he twirls up the next bite of pasta.

Mariah lets him get the pasta in his mouth before she speaks next, which is merciful because he definitely would have missed his face, but the downside is he has to work hard not to choke on it.

“If you see what I like, you might actually be able to get me off,” she says casually.

Shades gives up all pretense of having anything resembling pride and looks up at her with eyes that are just straight up pleading. From anyone else that would have been condescending, but Mariah says it with a note of genuine curiosity, as if the idea that a man might really be able to pleasure her is a completely novel one. He wants to give her the best orgasm of her life and then kill everyone else who’s ever touched her with their selfish, incompetent hands.

He has one last bite of pasta left, and of course she can’t allow him to simply eat it.

“I’ve been thinking about fucking your mouth for a while now,” Mariah says.

Shades does in fact fumble the bite of pasta this time, uselessly smearing the sauce against his bottom lip and chin. He presses his foot forward, and Mariah allows the extra contact, part of her ankle brushing against his. The feeling helps ground him, helps him breathe deep and not grip his hard dick pressing up into his hand through his slacks. He sets his fork down and picks up his napkin, focusing on making sure his hand doesn’t shake.

“No.” Mariah’s voice is soft, but firm. “Look at me."

Shades exhales slowly, then looks up. Mariah cocks her head as her eyes sweep over her face, and she gives a little hum of approval.

“Looks about right,” she murmurs.

Shades realizes with a punch of arousal that she’s thinking of how he’d look if the white sauce smeared across his lips and chin was her cum. He has to bite back another sound in the back of his throat, one that probably would have sounded needy and desperate. His cock throbs beneath his hand, but he won’t disobey and do anything about it.

That doesn’t mean he can’t fight back however.

Shades holds Mariah’s gaze as he lifts his hand back up, swiping his thumb across his chin to gather up the sauce and resting it on his bottom lip for a moment before lightly flicking his tongue over the pad of his thumb. Her eyebrows go up a little and her expression seems to say _You really want to play it like this?_ but she settles back in her seat to enjoy the show.

And he does make a show of it, slipping his thumb into his mouth and hollowing his cheeks when he sucks. She can’t see his tongue lave at the sauce, but he does it anyway because that’s what he’d do for her. The alfredo that was still coating his bottom lip gets smeared across the base of his thumb, and he takes his time licking that off too.

“You done being a smart mouthed brat?” she asks him when he’s finished.

Shades can’t help it. That setup is just too good to pass on, and he grins at her, even as it breaks him out of his headspace.

“Baby, my mouth got degrees,” he says.

Mariah’s eyes widen, and then she has to turn her head to the side while she has a sudden fit of laughter that she didn’t seem to expect at all.

“Boy,” she gasps when she can speak again. “You just killed the mood ‘cause you ain’t getting nowhere with that hokey ass line. Eat your damn food."

She’s smiling as she says it though, and Shades grins back at her before picking up his last bite. He knows it’s gone cold at this point, but he eats it anyway just because she told him to. He also knows she only told him to just because she can.

“Your mouth is that smart, huh?” Mariah asks in amusement as he finishes. “I didn’t know pussy licking was a college major."

And he’s really going to get in trouble for this one, but how can he resist?

“I graduated summa _cum_ laude,” Shades replies.

Mariah actually claps a hand over her mouth to keep from laughing too loudly at this fancy hushed restaurant. She lightly kicks his foot underneath the table.

“Goddammit, Hernan,” she says after getting her breath back. “Both hands on the table now, smartass."

Shades keeps grinning at her even as he puts his left hand back on the table, dick still hard and neglected underneath.

“I’ve had to listen to men make that cum joke about my degrees, their degrees, their daddy’s degrees, a thousand damn times.” Mariah smirks and looks at him fondly. “And that’s the first time it’s ever been funny."

Shades knows that turns his grin proud and dopey, but he can’t seem to wipe it off his face.

“Well, if you can be a good boy for the rest of the night, I suppose we’ll see how good that head of yours is,” Mariah drawls.

“Best of my class,” he promises.

Mariah smirks and calls the maitre d’ over.

“Check please."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chapter is going to be your smutty reward for sticking with this fic! I doubt I'll have it done in time to put it up this week, but I have several shorts for Shades and Mariah saved up, and I'll post one of them instead:
> 
> \--smutty one shot where someone tries to have Mariah assassinated, but it's honestly just an excuse for Shades to kill some people and then Mariah fucks his face as a reward
> 
> \--Shades and Mariah try to do business with white people, but the guy's a racist sexist asshole, so Mariah fucks allllll his shit up while Shades watches in awed adoration (no smut)
> 
> \--Shades and Mariah sext while he tortures someone for her and she's at a charity dinner event (no smut yet but), ch 2 will be him getting his reward for doing a Good Job
> 
> let me know which one you want me to post!


	6. Beg

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mariah makes Shades prove he can be a good boy and wait until he's given permission. But she only specified that he be good, not silent, and dogs are allowed to beg, right?

Shades has to deploy his jacket again, because Mariah leaves their table before his erection even has a chance of going down. He dutifully follows after her, only stepping in front when they reach the door so he can hold it open for her. He’s willing to go pull her car around himself so she doesn’t have to walk, or maybe get his car if Alex dropped her off, but she sets off across the parking lot. It isn’t until they reach her car—he’ll have to come back and get his later—that she finally speaks to him.

“Let me see,” Mariah commands.

Shades lets her back him up against the side of the car and nudge his arm holding the jacket protectively across his crotch out of the way. His hard on has gone down a bit during the walk in the cold air, especially with the rapidly cooling wet patch at the tip that makes him want to shiver at every breeze.

Mariah hums in consideration, before turning away dismissively. “Well at least one of us is wet."

She looks back over her shoulder and raises one eyebrow at him while she waits for the car door to be opened. Shades pushes down the flare of renewed arousal from her mocking insult and hurries to oblige her. She settles gracefully into her seat without another glance at him, and the ride back to her house is silent as he concentrates on the road instead of his straining, neglected dick.

*******

Mariah spends the ride back reviewing her game plan. Shades, in the chair. No ties, yet, but there’s a particular brand of silk rope she has in mind to have Alex order for her if this goes well. Her, on the bed. There’s a fresh bottle of KY in her nightstand, plain, none of that heating or tingling nonsense.

She’s still nervous, and that’s starting to piss her off.

As much as she has control over the setting, the scene, and hypothetically even Shades himself, there’s not much she can do to predict her own body. Even though Mariah the woman would like some stress relief orgasms right now, would like that very goddamn much, it’s entirely possible her body just won’t be feeling it.

On the other hand, her control over Shades might not be as firm as she imagines. She doubts he would do anything to deliberately hurt her, mostly because she knows he’s not stupid enough to bite the hand currently feeding him. He won’t do anything drastic enough that it would affect their very lucrative business arrangement, so she feels as safe as she supposes she’ll ever feel while about to engage in sexual activity with a cis man.

But what if he gets bored?

Letting him watch her masturbate probably sounds sexy to him right now, but Mariah knows what will really happen: she’ll lay on the bed, her hand the only part of her moving as she rubs back and forth over her clit in the exact same rhythm. She’s never been loud or really seen the point of moaning—that shit has to be fake anyway. Touching her nipples never has done anything for her, so it’s just going to be eight to twelve minutes of laying almost completely still and silent, trying very very hard to actually concentrate on feeling pleasure and not get mentally distracted by the way her books still need to be balanced to look clean.

Mariah glances up at Shades in the front seat while he drives and almost feels sorry for the poor boy who thinks he’s about to have a fantasy come true.

*******

Shades wouldn’t say he thinks Mariah is nervous, because she’s too well put together for that, even now. But he gets the sense that if he makes any sudden movements, she’ll call the night off and he’ll be back on the couch. He wants to go to his knees as soon as she leads him into her bedroom, but deviating from her plan for tonight might throw her off. Maybe he expected too much for a first-time Domme and should have--

“Your chair is over there,” Mariah says, breaking off his thoughts. “Move it here."

She points to a spot a few feet away from the foot of her bed, then walks over to her vanity and starts taking off her earrings as if he isn’t even there. Shades relaxes, a small smile on his face as he moves to obey. The chair is sturdy enough to be heavy, and he notes with pleasant surprise the arms seem strong enough for Mariah to tie his own arms to them after all.

It also doesn’t match any of the other chairs in the house, which means she bought this fuck ugly chair with solid armrests just for their play.

Mariah is waiting with her jacket off and in her hand for him to take when he finishes positioning the chair. Shades hangs it up for her, then turns around and waits for whatever she needs next while she takes off her shirt. It’s not a strip tease meant for him, but he still takes his sunglasses off to watch anyway. Mariah notices and slips off her skirt next.

“Laundry,” she orders.

Shades steps forward to gather up her shirt off the bed and skirt from the floor, then waits while Mariah unclasps her bra and hands that off to him too. When he finishes putting those away however, Mariah is standing beside the bed with her pantyhose still on.

She snaps her fingers and points to the spot on the floor in front of her, and Shades doesn’t bother to hide his grin as he hurries over to kneel in that spot.

“Take these off."

Mariah smooths her hand over his head while he lifts his hands to gently start peeling down the hose. She lets him go as slow as he likes, savoring the reveal of more and more of her skin. When he has her thighs free, he dips his head forward, waiting for a moment to give her time to push his head back before brushing his lips over her skin. Her grip tightens a bit as he makes his way up, but he skips over her panties and nuzzles into her stomach instead. She’s soft and warm, and stretch marks ripple across her skin like sunlight shining on tree bark.

Regrettably, he has to pull away to slide the pantyhose down the rest of her legs, and she holds onto his shoulder to stay steady while she steps out of them. She taps the edge of her panties so he’ll take those off next, but this time she drags her nails across the back of his neck when he tries to go slow, but doesn't punish him beyond that. It's understandable he'd get distracted admiring her cute triangle of black curls, with a beauty mark just above, to the left, that he wants so badly to kiss.

“Put those away too,” Mariah says when she’s finally undressed.

Shades does as he's told, but when he comes back, she stops him.

"It's chilly in here," she says, and his eyes can't help but drop down to the peaks of her nipples until she speaks again. "I want a shirt."

He moves to get one of her pajama shirts out of the drawer, but she whistles to get his attention and shakes her head no. He's not sure what she means until her eyes drop down to leer at his chest, then flick back up to meet his as she smirks.

Shades returns the smirk as he strolls back over, every movement slow and calculated. Her eyes follow him appreciatively and she cocks her head to the side in concentration when he starts unbuttoning his shirt. He still has an undershirt beneath, but the act of stripping for her makes heat curl inside him, especially knowing that soon she'll be wearing his shirt and nothing else.

That he'll gladly give her the actual shirt off his back if she only asks.

Shades reaches for his tie after he gets his shirt fully unbuttoned, but Mariah shakes her head again.

"Leave that on," she tells him.

"Yes, ma'am."

Her eyes drop to half-lidded at the sound of his voice, and he notes that reaction. He normally considers his voice a weapon, another tool at his disposal to intimidate people. And in games like this, he tends to keep quiet out of deference. But if Mariah likes hearing him speak ...

“Is there anything else you need?” Shades asks in a low murmur as he takes his shirt fully off.

“Well I’m not going to put it on myself,” Mariah replies haughtily.

He smiles a bit too genuinely, proud of how quickly she’s learned to do this too. He may have hoped she’d embrace this side of herself too when he pushed her to step up, but that had always been a long shot he’d kept in the back of his mind, until she initiated things with that kiss.

But Shades pushes those thoughts away and focuses on his new task. She lets him step closer and drape his shirt around her shoulders, then kneel down to help hold the fabric steady while she gets her arms through. He reaches to start with the buttons next, but she catches his hand.

“I don’t like anything tight around my neck.” She guides his hand a few buttons down, where a generous amount of cleavage will show through. “Start here."

It isn’t a command that needs an answer, but Shades tests his theory. “My pleasure."

Mariah just snorts and trails her nails down the side of his neck, making him fight down a shiver while he does up the button she specified. No punishment or chastisement for speaking out of turn. How often he’s allowed to speak is a finer detail neither of them thought to discuss in their contract, but he’ll bring it up to Mariah later since they clearly have differing opinions.

Buttoning his shirt is the opposite of the strip tease he was allowed to give himself with her pantyhose, but the combination of having a familiar, monotonous task and the possessive pride of being allowed to put _his_ shirt on her has Shades drifting pretty quickly. He’s calm and warm and feeling very good by the time he finishes.

Even better when she smooths both hands down his head to his shoulders, then up his next to cup his face as a reward. He doubts putting him down in subspace is the point of tonight’s game, but that move drops him down just a little bit further.

“Get me the lube in my nightstand,” Mariah tells him softly. “Then go sit in your chair."

Shades exhales slowly, but his voice is still rough with arousal when he replies. “Yes ma’am."

Mariah gives him that hooded look again before pulling his head forward to brush a kiss across his temple, then drops her hands down to push lightly at his shoulders. He follows her silent direction and stands, padding over to the head of the bed. He still isn’t used to how she spoils him with soft touches and affection. With every other Dom, he had to endure--

Shades pushes those thoughts away, because he is _not_ unpacking that shit right now.

He had to go through a lot to get anything resembling kindness as a reward, but Mariah doles it out like Oprah giving away free cars. The other shoe has to drop eventually, but he’s going to savor every selfish second until it does.

The lube is plain and unscented, and Shades also grabs a pillow from the head of the bed so Mariah’s neck won’t hurt. She graces him with another smile when he gives her the items, and he settles down into his new chair, noting with satisfaction that his wrists hit the arms of the chair just before they end, in the perfect spot for her to tie him down. The legs of the chair also seem sturdy enough to hold his legs if she zip-tied his ankles.

For how fucking ugly it is, it’s a very nice chair.

“Are you comfortable?” Mariah asks him.

Shades nods. “Thank you for this."

Her smile turns to a smirk. “It’s a present for me too."

“Then I’m doubly grateful,” he replies.

She shakes her head playfully at his smooth answer and lays back on the bed. Shades is glad he’s already sitting down, because suddenly he feels a little lightheaded, confronting the fact that this is actually happening—he’s in Mariah Dillard’s house with a front row seat to watch as she pleasures herself.

He half-expects to wake up in Seagate and find it was all a stupid fantasy dream to cope with--

“This will take eight to twelve minutes,” Mariah says, her voice gone blank like she’s in a business meeting. “Maybe longer if I can’t concentrate."

Her thighs look tense, and even though the pillow raises her head up enough that she could look at him, she stares straight up at the ceiling. Not nervous, but wary. Like she’s about to let him drive her brand new car for the first time and trusting he won’t total it.

“I could make some white noise for you,” Shades offers to break the tension.

It at least gets her to look up at him, so he risks it.

“Ketchup is a spice,” he says in a completely deadpan serious voice.

Mariah stares at him for another second before dropping her head back down, but he can still hear her snicker.

“Martin Luther King Jr. wouldn’t approve of that."

She gasps, then barks out a laugh.

“Kylo Ren really needs a redemption arc,” Shades continues. “I just don’t like Finn for some reason."

Mariah gives up trying to hold back and rolls onto her side to laugh into her arm., her feet kicking with glee for just a second.

“Goddammit, Hernan,” she gasps when she’s through. “You done now?"

Shades grins at her. “Yes ma’am."

“Good. I need to concentrate."

There’s not any real heat in her voice though, and she looks much more relaxed as she reaches for the lube. To his surprise, she doesn’t use it on her entrance, but swirls it directly around her clit for a moment, breath catching from too much stimulation too fast before she eases off. She does it again, this time keeping up the lazy circles around her clit.

Then it dawns on him. If she doesn’t experience sexual attraction, she may also have difficulties getting aroused. And trying to do anything with a vagina that isn’t wet just ain’t gonna work. So she has to get aroused to get wet enough to properly stimulate herself, but she has to stimulate herself first to get aroused.

Like the Catch 22 from hell.

But Shades keeps his realization private and silent. Mariah said she needed to concentrate, so he keeps his mouth shut and focuses on memorizing every detail of the scene before him.

Her legs are spread wide across the bed, but they rest casually on top of the covers. He knows the position is to give her better access, not any consideration toward his viewing pleasure.

Still, it does give him a damn good view.

He's grateful she hasn't shaved, just neatly trimmed like she specified for him too. Shaved pussy looks too much like fake straight porn and gives him the uncomfortable slick-smooth feeling of fingering a raw turkey. Her pussy looks like it belongs to a grown woman, and he pays due attention to her technique as she works her clit over fast for a few seconds before easing back to several long moments of slow circles.

Mariah doesn’t moan or pant or touch herself anywhere else. He wonders if that would do her any good. While she’s always been the one to initiate their kisses, she’s never seemed aroused by them, and he doesn’t let his ego kid himself into thinking he affects her a tenth as much as she affects him.

“So this, for the next seven minutes.” Mariah says, breaking the silence.

She’s settled into a steadier rhythm now, not varying so much as she strokes herself. Her voice is still as cool as ever.

“Thank you for allowing me to watch,” Shades replies.

That gets his first real response out of her. The noise she makes is just a considering hum, an acknowledgment of his words, but her finger pauses for just a split-second. A reaction to his voice? Or does she doubt what he said, how grateful he is to be here?

" _If_ I allow you to help ..."

Mariah pauses, letting that threat hang there between them, that she might not let him touch her again at all for the rest of the night, send him to bed completely unsatisfied. A slow grin spreads on his face the longer she draws it out. He'd enjoy making her come much more than the alternative, but he always has been a glutton for punishment.

"And you try to write the goddamn alphabet on _my_ clit," she finally continues. "I'll put you on your back, ride your tongue until I'm just about to come, and then kick you back down to the mattress and go to bed too."

Shades accidentally lets a startled, distressed noise slip. Now Mariah's eyes drift down from the ceiling to him as she's the one smirking. It's not a punishment that relies on pain or humiliation, which runs the risk of him enjoying it. No, she just skipped right past all of that to press her thumb against the soft spot where his desire to please her and pride in getting a job done intersect.

And now he can't stop thinking about laying on the mattress beside her bed, knowing that his mistress is frustrated and unsatisfied above him, wet and wanting to come--but not letting him help, not even touching herself, willing to burn with him to punish him for not doing his job properly the first time.

His hands flex, grip the chair arms, flex again. Reminds himself that dropping into subspace isn't on the agenda tonight. But fuck if that didn't motivate him, with her vicious smirk flaunting that he slipped up and she knows exactly how much power that threat holds over him.

"Ma'am." His voice cracks at first, so he clears his throat and tries again. " _If_ you allow me to help ... I'll pleasure you to your specification."

Mariah's smirk turns softer at the sincerity in his promise, but she looks back up at the ceiling before he can read too much into her eyes. His own gaze is drawn back down between her legs anyway when she dips two fingers into her cunt, where slick is finally starting to gather. He wonders what she tastes like, glad she got plain lube so there won't be anything obscuring her natural flavor.

Shades stays absolutely silent after that. He likes that she isn't loud because he doesn't have to wonder if it's fake, and every soft exhale and pleased sigh feels that much more important. His nails dig into the wood of the chair against his desire to pull those precious sounds from her himself, how each one would be like a trophy.

Minutes pass slowly, part of the sweetest torture to watch her grow wet and swollen with arousal, fingers slick but always steady in their rhythm. And then she seems to hit a plateau, already wet enough to work over her clit fast and easy, but now the soft breaths she makes veer more toward frustrated huffs. Shades doesn’t want to interrupt, but being watched like this might be niggling at the back of her mind enough to keep her from concentrating the way she needs to.

“Dinner was good,” Shades says softly, pausing for a moment in case she tells him to be quiet. “The way you took away my hand so I couldn’t eat right."

The rhythm of Mariah’s fingers has slowed, but she hasn’t stopped or ordered silence from him. She doesn’t bother replying either, and he doesn’t expect her to. He’s not saying anything she needs to focus on, just making white noise in the background like he said he would.

“And telling me to touch myself."

He’s tempted to do that now. She hadn’t specifically said he couldn’t, so surely he could at least drop his hand down to rest over the front of his pants like in the restaurant.

But Mariah hadn’t specifically said he could, either.

“I know that you own me and my body,” Shades continues, voice even rougher than usual. “But I enjoyed the reminder."

That gets an exhale from her that lasts for a beat longer than the rest, almost a sigh. He probably wouldn’t have noticed if she wasn’t his complete and sole focus, but getting even the smallest reaction out of her takes his own arousal even higher. He wants more, and he replays exactly what just happened in his mind. Mariah didn’t sigh after the first part. It wasn’t his admission that she owned him that got to her—it was saying he enjoyed it.

Shades decides to test this new theory.

“I liked when you made the situation clear to that other woman. You could have taken my jacket too, shown her how hard I was for you."

Her fingers speed up for a moment, pressing her closer to the edge before slowing down to their usual pace, probably to keep from getting oversensitive. Shades has to swallow hard before he can make his voice work again and finds his mouth is literally watering at the sight.

“When you pressed me up against the car …"

He trails off because it’s getting harder to think, to put into coherent words just how much she affects him. Especially seeing—being allowed to see—that he’s finally having an effect on her too.

“Could have pushed me to my knees too,” Shades rasps. “Right there in the parking lot."

But Mariah makes a displeased noise in the back of her throat at that. He tries to think clearly enough to find where he crossed a line. She liked the thought of showing him off, making it clear to someone else that she owned him. Still good with pressing him against the car. The protest only came after the fantasy of getting him on his knees for her in public. Maybe there’s a limit to how much she wants to show off versus what is hers alone.

So he backtracks to what worked originally, focusing on his own reactions instead.

“Pants are stained now,” he tells her, then gives a dry chuckle. “Getting worse, watching you."

She makes a noise close to a hum, letting him know he’s on the right track again.

“Been at least half hard all evening. Hurts now, but I like that."

Her fingers speed up again, and this time Shades doesn’t bother to hold back a groan at watching them press against her swollen clit, so eager to come.

“Like it better if you did tie me,” he says, words feeling rough and clumsy in his throat. “S’a good chair for that. But then I couldn’t help you. And I want—"

He has to stop and swallow again before his voice cracks. Mariah lets out another of those long exhales and this time she hasn’t slowed her rhythm.

“I want to make you come, however you’ll let me."

She hums, but still doesn’t beckon him over. Shades flexes his hands on the chair arms, gritting his teeth against the blur in his vision, want pounding through him until he can’t think of anything but her.

“Want you to hold me down—or tell me, just tell me to be still and I will."

Her hips are rolling up now, and it’s torture to be sitting in this damn chair, _not_ tasting or touching her.

“Want you to fuck my face,” Shades grounds out, voice nearly a growl. “Want it more than touching myself, want you to mark me and make you come and do a good job—"

Mariah makes a frustrated little whine, hovering right on the edge, and Shades lurches forward in the chair until he’s sitting on the edge, barely holding himself back.

“Fuck me,” he begs. “Ma’am, please, fuck me. _Please_."

Finally she reaches out for him, and his knees are hitting the floor at the foot of the bed before he’s even aware of moving. Her hand curls around the back of his head, pressing his face forward in between her legs, but she doesn’t need to because he’s already burying his face in her pussy like he’s starving for it.

The first lick gets another frustrated noise, almost a snarl this time because she’s so close and she had to take her fingers away to give his tongue room, but Mariah lets out a startled inhale of pleasure after his second lick and sighs with relief by the third.

Shades can’t stop the groans that feel like they’re being wrenched out of him. She tastes like salt and earth and _heat_ , and he clutches the bedspread with both hands on either side of her hips so he doesn’t bruise her skin.

“Hernan—"

His name sounds strangled from her lips, not a soft sigh, and he knows like he can feel it himself how desperate she is and mad as hell that she _just can’t get there_ as her nails dig into the back of his head. He grabs her hips as carefully as he can while feeling like he might come untouched himself, guiding them to roll up and fuck herself on his face while he holds his tongue still.

Mariah catches on immediately and does exactly that, hard and fast with both hands gripping his head, wetness smeared across his scalp that might be her own slick from her fingers or blood welling up from how deep her nails are clawing at him. Shades’s eyes twist shut as he concentrates on holding still for her like he promised, not even bothering to care about breathing, just desperately trying to hang on until she--

Mariah comes with a choked off gasp, and then several quiet moans as she rides his tongue through the aftershocks. He picks up again when her hips drop down, licking her soft and slow to draw it out as long as possible for her. When she finally pushes his head back, he has to press his face against her inner thigh while he trembles and gets his breath back.

“Ma—ma’am."

His voice breaks and he sounds absolutely wrecked. But that’s how it should be, he thinks with a shiver. On his knees, face covered with her cum, Mariah happy and sated above him. He’s not sure if his head is spinning from how good this is or how close he’d gotten to coming, but he drops his forehead back down against her leg.

“Thank you,” Shades murmurs into her skin. “Thank you, thank you."

Mariah brushes her knuckles across his temple, over his cheek, and down to his jaw. “You did good, baby."

He shudders again with pride and satisfaction.

“So good,” she repeats softly.

Shades kisses her fingertips, then licks at them like the dog he is, drawing them into his mouth to suck off the wetness. He’s dangerously close to letting go entirely and giving in to the calm warmth threatening to blanket his mind. But cleanup still needs to be done, and he doesn’t want Mariah to have to get up after this, so he fights to stay clearheaded.

Mariah starts to say something, but she gets cut off by a yawn. He smirks against her fingers, delighted to have done that good of a job.

“You put my pussy to sleep, so does that mean I gotta start calling you Nyquil?” she asks when the yawn is done.

Now Shades looks up and really grins at her. “Sorry, ma’am. White noise Herman doesn’t get that reference."

She laughs and shakes her head. “Well _Hernan_ had better get me my pajamas."

Shades wipes his mouth slowly, taking the time to lick the wetness off the back of his own hand before he stands up. It’s difficult walking with his hard-on still pressing insistently agains the seam of his pants, but he’s used to not being allowed to come and ignores it.

“You’re lucky that smart mouth of yours actually can back up all the dumb shit it talks,” Mariah says from behind him.

He turns around and smirks again as he walks over with her matching silk pajamas. “Anytime you want to put it to the test again …"

“Mm.” She takes the pajamas and notes that the underwear he’d chosen for her was one of her plain cotton pairs, meant for a comfortable night in, then rewards him with a smile. “Thank you."

The buttons of his shirt are already undone, something she must have done while his back was turned. He wishes she’d let him do that himself, but he’s certainly not going to lodge any complaints after how much she’s spoiled him tonight. Mariah shrugs off his shirt and hands it to him, which he keeps. His own laundry hamper is in the guest bedroom, not a place he sleeps, but he still has to admit it is nice to have his own space in her home. But it doesn’t look like she’s dismissing him yet, so putting his own shirt away will have to wait.

Mariah stands, and he automatically offers his arm so she can steady herself while putting on her underwear. Instead, she sweeps her eyes critically over him.

“Are you ready to do cleanup?” she asks.

He hadn’t missed the way her gaze paused on the obvious bulge of his erection still confined in his pants, and he knows what she’s really asking. But he can tell she’s tired, and the thought of her getting him just as a return favor—an obligation, a _chore_ —is far worse than going to bed unsatisfied.

He’d rather earn a reward like that anyway.

“I stay ready, baby,” Shades replies.

Echoing her words gets another smile out of her and she finally takes his arm. Once she’s dressed again, she yawns and indulges in a stretch while he steps forward to pull her covers back. It’s a better feeling than he expected, the intimacy of helping her into bed combined with the satisfaction of knowing he’d done well tonight.

“Move the chair back, then get a water bottle and a granola bar,” Mariah orders as she snuggles down.

Shades tucks the covers in around her with a quiet _yes ma’am_ , and does as she says. Moving the chair only takes a moment and after he leaves the room, he steals a minute to change into a spare set of sweats and a tee he keeps in the guest bedroom. Mariah’s presence is like warm sunlight, but it’s still nice to have a moment to himself after a scene, and get out of his nearly-ruined boxers. The pants might be saved if he gets them to dry cleaning tomorrow.

When he comes back into Mariah’s room with what she requested, she doesn’t seem to mind the slight pause or his change of clothes, just points down at his mattress on the floor for him to sit. He waits for a beat to see if she wants him to put the snack anywhere, but she lazily raises an eyebrow when her unspoken order isn’t immediately fulfilled, so he sits.

“You need water and sugar after a scene,” she says from above him.

Shades blinks at the water bottle and granola bar. It’s a nice thought, but he didn’t go into subspace. Even if he had, he can take care of himself fine afterwards. Water and sugar after are just BDSM 101 tips for regular people who have soft, easy lives.

“You did most of the work,” he answers.

Her hand swings down off the side of the bed. He doesn’t flinch, but he does go very still for a moment, bracing himself before he realizes she’s petting across his scalp gently, not rebuking him for backtalk.

“I think your contribution was fairly significant,” Mariah says, voice relaxed and amused.

Shades allows himself to breathe out and relax into the gentle petting in turn. He unscrews the cap and lifts the bottle to his lips to please his Domme, even if it seems unnecessary to him. She’s in charge, and if she wants to show off her power by spoiling him, it’s not his place to question.

Even if he’d rather go to bed with her taste still in his mouth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK sorry for this taking so long! my personal life got kind of hectic and I always forget how slow I am at writing smut :/
> 
> but we're moving on now! I think next chapter Mariah is going to take Shades shopping to make sure their outfits coordinate for the community gathering she's calling together, so let me know what sort of shenanigans you think the two of them could get up to in a fitting room before the tailor comes back ... ;)

**Author's Note:**

> I'd also like to thank not only God but also Jesus that we all collectively formed an unspoken agreement that Shades is a desperate, pathetic little sub boy, there isn't a single fic on here where he isn't the sub, y'all have a blessed day


End file.
